BBC micro
I was often made aware by people at the time that the beeb was the "best computer in the world."
Even my next-door neighbour ( who was a bit of a coder and quite technically savvy) reckoned it was superior to his atari800xl!
The specs of the machine don't particularly make it stand out (as far as I'm aware), but I DO remember being impressed when I watched an episode of 'making the most of ur micro' and they had a whole host of 8-bits lined up (including the spectrum128 ) to complete a complex calculation in the fastest time, and the beeb won!
Also, the 400 quid price tag must have gone someway to creating strengths, but it is not immediately obvious to me. What where they?
I'm probably gonna pick one up at some point, being the sad collector that I am:-D
Even my next-door neighbour ( who was a bit of a coder and quite technically savvy) reckoned it was superior to his atari800xl!
The specs of the machine don't particularly make it stand out (as far as I'm aware), but I DO remember being impressed when I watched an episode of 'making the most of ur micro' and they had a whole host of 8-bits lined up (including the spectrum128 ) to complete a complex calculation in the fastest time, and the beeb won!
Also, the 400 quid price tag must have gone someway to creating strengths, but it is not immediately obvious to me. What where they?
I'm probably gonna pick one up at some point, being the sad collector that I am:-D
Post edited by urbanupstart on
Comments
it was mostly down to them winning the contract to put em in all the schools..thats why they had great success.
only ever knew one person who had one at home tho
oh the hardware? er, as a coder, the clock cycle VIA stuff, enables the most wicked protection systems (Kevin Edwards) - took a bunch of hackers 20 years to sort out how Nightshade decoded.
Having multiple graphic modes.
Fast Basic - one that allowed proper functions and procedures - GOTO wasn't required! - plus built in 6502 assembler.
Even at £400 it was perhaps cheaper than some micros at that time (1981) as well. (not sure about this)
Yeah, I knew a couple. One of them's mum was a teacher so theirs was bought to help educate the thick bugger, an the other's parents were always shopping at Marks and sparks, so I suppose It was generally a rich kids 'toy'
I know the games generally were nothing special compared to speccy and the good build of the machine could not have been more than 100 quids worth of extra cash, so it's a strange one really:confused:
It did have loads in input and output connections compared with many other home computers of the time.
Also the internal upgrade options were vast, very vast as there was loads of spare space in the case and sockets on board to permit this.
It's basic language had exception handling, which is somthing only the very latest programming languages of the time could boast.
but the beeb is technically superior to the spectrum, the speccy is a cheap and nasty machine with all the corners cut, to cut costs. The beeb, being aimed at education and wholesale distribution to education boards could get away with being expensive.
it has the circuitry built in for networking and disk interface (the ICs were not fitted, these were an optional extra addon) it has an assembler built into the operating system, so mc routines and basic can be mixed in one program. multiple graphics modes of course, proper ram paging system etc.
Ah, so essentially with this machine, u were furnished with plenty of tools to help u with programming, whereas say, the speccy, u had to build everything urself and it was like an empty slate?
If that is so, how much did that limit the final performance of the machine? How much more could have been squeezed out do u think?
The big limitation on the BBC Micro itself was the lack of memory. There was only 32K of RAM in total as standard, and the most capable video modes used about 20K of this, leaving you very little for programs. This was alleviated by "sideways" RAM expansions later on, but games programmers couldn't always count on these and had to use inventive solutions like storing code in parts of the screen memory that weren't being used.
FRAK :)
*hides elite under the rug*
If ever there was a machine that appealed to the stereotypical middle classes, then that was it - or at least that's exactly how it was we're I come from.
You can rest assured that the BBC owning household often followed one or more of these traits...
1. The BBC owner was one of the school boffins.
2. They invariably wore glasses.
3. They would listen to slightly unfashionable but intelligent music like 'Mike Oldfield' and 'Jean Michel Jarre'
4. Their parents would drive a Volvo Estate
5. They would be vegetarian
6. The family would be extremely well off, owning a house with 5 or more bedrooms, and possibly have an attic conversion.
7. They would display an air of superiority over Spectrum users, who they quietly scoffed at, as only THEY could play 'Elite' which is far too complex a game to run on a Spectrum. Also, only their computer had 'structured programming' capabilities.
8. They would often type in BASIC program listings with lots of percent signs in.
9. Not only were they rich enough to own a BBC, but they also would have a Microvitec CUB colour monitor and a 5.25" disk drive to go with it.
10. They would probably go to church regularly.
11. Both father and mother of the BBC owner would have rather impressive beards.
12. The occupation of the father and mother is very likely to be either a teacher or a vicar.
13. They would never watch ITV, but only BBC2.
As a 13 year old kid that wouldnt have impressed me ! Dont care if it can work out some sum the fastest way, i wanted games games games !
One of my mates had a Beeb and there were some very good games i liked on the BBC, obviously Elite/Frak/Sim/Mr Ee!/Citadel but i think that was about it !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkPeDQKRpEk :) used to play this in the library at high school and thought it was the best game on the system, also pretty sure that the BBC version of Snake was the first ever game I played (apart from Grandstand's Solar Powered handheld, Jack and the Beanstalk).
From discussions here in the past regarding the C64's 6510 processor and it's 1 Mhz being roughly comparible to a 2 - 2.5 Mhz Z80 then the BBC must have had some poke with it's 2 Mhz 6502 processor.
stone him he`s a traitor lol
I think we forget how good these arcade conversions were because there is just no reason to play them any more. Why play the BBC versions when you can play the mame originals just as easily.
I also remember being impressed with how the BBC model B had it's own assembler built in - no need to load one. It should have been easier to add machine code routines to programs (not that I ever did!)
Wouldnt say theres no reason not to play them anymore. I quite like playing a more 'basic' version of say Commando on the Speccy rather than the MAME one. Do love the original arcade version but i also like playing and seeing how a huge arcade game can be coded into 48k. Eg Afterburner/Space Harrier which are both very playable on the Speccy.
Bit like an X-Box 360 fan saying 'theres no point playing these older games as theyre crap compared to the X-Box'.
I love playing Speccy conversions of arcade classics
But it was very well designed.
For example, it had probably the best operating system layer of the 8 bits. It made programming it very nice. It made expanding it very good. It had a formal method of adding ROMs, such that standard OS calls worked with it, therefore existing software would work just fine with new hardware.
Expanding a Spectrum, for example, and adding extra commands that can be called from BASIC is a kludge, and you have to do nasty hardware tricks if you have two expansion boards with BASIC extensions. None of this is necessary with the Beeb, it has a proper method of registering ROMs and accessing them through the operating system.
It was also very fast, the 2MHz 6502 is quite a swift beast (certainly faster than a 3.5 MHz Z80), had a fast text mode as well as graphics modes, and memory was uncontended so there was no slowdown when accessing memory that was also used for video.
I never had a Beeb of my own - they were too expensive, but we had them at school - an econet network of them!
I have two of my own BBCs now, though :-) I still really appreciate the design. I have one BBC with an internal IDE hard disc, too.
I must say, I've been nosing round and this copy conversion of mr do on the beeb (Mr Ee) looks pretty good. It is quite comparable to the arcade version
I was always addicted to that one in the arcades
For example I love the spectrum version of bombjack because that is the version that I played the most as a kid.
Nowadays I still play the spectrum version of bombjack the most and occasionally have a go at the mame version.
Don't get me wrong here I'm sure the C64, Amstrad, Gameboy, nes, snes(?!), megadrive, Atari(insert random numbers here), master system, intellivision, msx and colecovision conversions of this game are very good!
But I'm not that likely to spend too long installing umpteen emulators to try all these different versions of a game that is never going to beat the nostalgia I have for the spectrum version!
I just don't have the same attachment to the BBC versions of many games (even tho' they are good). People who grew up with the BBC probably DO have that nostalgia and WILL play these games - But there were far less BBC users than spec-chums.
If you never owned a BBC model B, chances are you will load up an emulator to play an original Beeb game like Exile or Imogen.
You probably won't bother playing snapper (pacman) or Mr Wiz/Mr Ee (Mr. Do) as you already have your own favourite versions of these games from when you played them for the first time...
I was just making the point that the arcade conversions on the beeb are of very high quality and few people play them.
I think you misunderstand what I'm getting at.
The Beeb had a good, formal way of adding new ROMs, and adding new commands that would get called via OSCLI (i.e. * commands) as well as the equivalent of streams (so for example, opening files from BASIC would work whether you were using DFS, ADFS or ANFS)
The trouble is with the Speccy is that adding one add-on board with a ROM is easy. Adding two requires all sorts of kludges, such as doing things to the A15 line on your through port, and monitoring the through port ROMCS line because there's no organized ways of having more than one additional ROM. That allied with incomplete port decoding makes adding hardware of more than trivial interface complexity to the Spectrum a little bit, well, sub-optimal. Even using channels and streams, something on that piece of hardware has to get code to run in the system to drive the hardware, so you're going to have to page a ROM in. Without a formal way of organizing paged ROMs, peripheral designers were left to come up with their own schemes so that their ROM didn't get paged in at the same time as another peripheral's ROM (many probably just nailed MREQ high on the through port and said tough luck!)
BBC sideways ROMs, though, had a straightforward mechanism of registering with the OS, as well as the hardware support to add them in the first place. It was all nicely abstracted, with a very simple method, which also allowed for easy pure software extensions too as all the OS calls were indirected through RAM, allowing the programmer to trap any OS call without resorting to hardware.
Psion must have been wusses :-) Aviator on the BBC Micro was a flight simulator of higher calibre than Psion flight sim, and it ran just fine in the available memory.
For me, the best things about the Beeb were the ROMs and EPROMs, robots and other computer controlled devices, and the 5.25" disk drives.
I've got a Master 128 with an MMC card interface inside - it only cost a tenner to build and is full of disk images of hundreds of games. It's also got a 3.5" drive that I hope to fit internally, Amiga style.
Cool, many thanks!! :)
100% spot on!!!! :-)
*key10
Meh, the C64 version has better scrolling.
Of course, the BBC Micro was the only computer that had Tony Oakden's games on it - Star Port beats Dizzy any day! The graphics are all primary colors, though.
well, whatever it was, i typed it in, and said "watch this!", hit enter to run it... and the computer just died there and then :lol: god knows what happened… it never worked again :D
NB: they weren't too impressed!